Product Launch: Nominal Connect
The modern hardware-in-the-loop test app framework built specifically for hardware engineers
Why We Built Nominal Connect
Critical aerospace, defense, and industrial systems rely on brittle scripts duct-taped to aging GUIs. Nominal’s founding team saw this firsthand in our work at companies like SpaceX, NASA, and Lockheed Martin: scripts that failed at 2 AM, missing calibration constants discovered only after costly wasted effort, and data buried across fragmented and legacy desktop tools. Status quo test & evaluation tools were designed in a pre-Internet era – not for the complex, cloud-dependent, and massive data reality of today.
Engineers must quickly build custom apps for hardware-in-the-loop (”HITL”) tests. Unfortunately, existing solutions lack the speed, reliability, interfaces, and edge-ready performance necessary for mission-critical deployments. Relatively new projects in this field such as Robot Framework and Google's OpenHTF have taken refreshing looks at the problem, but weren’t built for collaborative decision-making, capturing essential metadata, and first-class operator GUIs. Command-line tools are nearly impossible to operationalize in test environments without substantial additional software engineering.
Introducing Nominal Connect
Nominal Connect solves these problems: it's a modern hardware-in-the-loop test app framework built specifically for hardware engineers. Connect combines a straightforward, Python-first development experience with robust edge infrastructure designed explicitly for real-time hardware data processing. Engineers and technicians can quickly create custom interfaces, automate tests, and reliably monitor complex hardware systems – handling sensor data streams at kilohertz rates, faster than your display can refresh.
To drive this vision forward, we’ve brought Jack Parmer – founder and former CEO of Plotly – to Nominal. Jack built one of the most widely-used data visualization frameworks ever: Plotly has over 500 million downloads. And Dash, Plotly’s web-based data science framework, boasts nearly 75 million. Connect marks Jack’s return to his hardware engineering roots, and we’re excited about the powerful community he's already building here at Nominal.
Nominal Connect isn’t a future promise – it's actively powering test operations today. Teams currently run Connect-based apps at launch pads, airport tarmacs, laboratory test benches, and nuclear test sites. If you’re building the future and still wrestling with legacy tools like TestStand or LabVIEW, Connect is here, ready to help you move faster.
Architecture
We've enthusiastically joined the “rewrite it in Rust” movement, rethinking decades-old testing architectures to deliver unmatched performance, safety, and stability. Rust gives us the speed and memory efficiency of C++, combined with modern compile-time guarantees of safety. This combination enables rapid data handling and immediate-mode graphics performance that older web or desktop stacks simply can't match.
We're actively recruiting ambitious Rust engineers at the cutting edge of scientific graphics and real-time systems. Special thanks go to our friends at Foresight Spatial Labs and the Bevy Foundation, who've generously shared insights and laid invaluable groundwork for Connect’s development.
Critically, Nominal Connect integrates seamlessly into Nominal’s cloud and on-premises core product. With just one click, you can stream gigabytes of test data or video directly from a Connect app running on your test bench or tarmac into Nominal’s platform. Together, Nominal Connect and Nominal’s core platform form the industry’s first fully integrated edge-to-server solution for hardware test and evaluation.
The future
Nominal Connect is live, bringing the most advanced software technology directly to the field, test bench, and launch pad. Wherever hardware testing demands reliability, flexibility, and speed, Connect is ready. Over the coming months, we'll showcase real-world customer-built apps, share user stories, and dive deep into the tech behind Connect. We can’t wait to celebrate this launch with the engineering community—stay tuned!